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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021030">Scars to Your Beautiful</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me'>gremlins-came-and-got-me (Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Derek Hale has had a Hard Life, Descriptions of past injuries, Future Fic, M/M, Past Jennifer Blake, Past implied sexual assault, Permanent scars, Self-Doubt, Semi-Canon Compliant, Spark Stiles Stilinski, past Kate Argent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:01:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021030</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek's scars come back. All of them. He thinks Stiles won't love him anymore, but Stiles has a revelation for him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>185</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Scars to Your Beautiful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title comes from Alessia Cara's <i>Scars to Your Beautiful</i>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Derek notices the first scar when he’s shaving on Tuesday. It’s a thin mark across one cheek. He traces it with a fingertip, marveling at the fact that something was able to mark him.</p><p>He hasn’t been near fire—Stiles won’t let him even touch the stove—or any wolfsbane, so how he ended up with a scar is a mystery.</p><p>It’s not noticeable to anyone else, but it bothers Derek. He’s never scarred before.</p><p>He’s distracted all day, wondering what he touched or what poison he ingested that made him scar.</p><p>All day, Stiles has to keep reminding him that he’s supposed to be working on the manuscript for Werewolf Etiquette—really, it’s a self-help book for first time alphas that he’s working with Satomi Ito on.</p><p>It’s not until he and Stiles are in bed, Stiles messing around on his phone, trying to take surreptitious photos of the both of them to send to the rest of the pack, that Derek realizes the scar is in the exact place that he got hit with a branch when he was two years old.</p><p>He touches it briefly, remembering the sting that had faded quite quickly. It had bled, his mom had to kiss the unbroken skin afterward, but it was the first time Derek recalled ever being hurt.</p><p>~ * ~</p><p>Wednesday, Derek wakes up with an ache in his stomach and new-old scars striping his sides. He’d gotten too close to Laura when she was losing control on the full moon. She’d nearly eviscerated him before Peter had pulled them apart.</p><p>Derek had been three.</p><p>He presses on the scars, wondering with trepidation, just how many of the injuries he’s suffered in his lifetime are going to be painted onto his skin.</p><p>And he wonders how long it will take Stiles to notice.</p><p>Turns out, it takes less than a day. Derek sits down to breakfast, gets a mouthful of waffles, and then Stiles squawks at him.</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>“What’s what?” Derek asks. Turns out it’s a scar right across the bridge of his nose from when Cora was a baby and learning how to swipe at things with her claws. Big Brother Derek, four years old, had been too close and had paid the price. He’d healed rather quickly and without tears, but now the reminder is on his skin, indelible marks he can’t hide.</p><p>Stiles sits in his lap and turns his face one way and then another.</p><p>“Have you been getting into Deaton’s wolfsbane?” he demands.</p><p>“No,” Derek says. He reaches around Stiles to keep eating, pretending that it doesn’t hurt when Stiles’ scent goes sour, the way it does when he thinks Derek is lying to him.</p><p>“No really. Where’d you get that scar from?”</p><p>“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Derek replies. He purposefully chews his waffle loudly, and Stiles huffs, sliding off his lap.</p><p>“Try me.”</p><p>Derek rolls his shoulders, tension tightening them. Oh, no, wait. It’s another scar. When he was five, in a distracted moment, Peter had given him too hot a bath. He’d been scalded. Cried for hours because he could feel his skin blistering long after he’d been pulled out and had healed.</p><p>“I don’t know why I keep getting scars, but it’s from injuries I had a long time ago.”</p><p>“Your nose?”</p><p>“Cora, when she was about eight months and I was four.”</p><p>“Your cheek?”</p><p>“Two years old. Branch.”</p><p>“Any other scars so far?”</p><p>Derek nods.</p><p>“Care to show them to me?”</p><p>Derek shakes his head.</p><p>“Fine. I’ll look into curses and things. You—” Stiles blows out a breath. “Please, just let me know if any more show up. And let me know if they hurt.”</p><p>“They don’t,” Derek assures him. At least, they don’t hurt now. They definitely hurt when he got them.</p><p>Stiles doesn’t believe him, the sour smell still wafting over him, but he leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Derek’s mouth. “I’ll see you after work,” he promises. “Try not to get any more scars please.”</p><p>“Don’t know how to stop them,” Derek says. “Have a good day.” He returns the kiss and goes back to his waffles.</p><p>After Stiles heads out to his job at the new research library Lydia founded, Derek goes to their bedroom and strips. He stands in front of the full length mirror and studies the puckering of his skin, the slashes of lines cutting through the hair on his chest, at the long, thin mark swirling up his leg.</p><p>That’s new. Derek touches the skin, flinching at the remembered pain of playing with a nearby pack and having one of the human betas try to skin his leg to see if he’d heal.</p><p>Then, he gets dressed again and sits down at the kitchen table with a notebook. He begins writing down every injury he can remember, every time someone or something made him bleed.</p><p>He manages to fill half the notebook before he even gets to the first year he met Stiles.</p><p>The next six months fills the rest of the book. He gets out another one and keeps writing.</p><p>By the time Stiles gets home, a stack of papers in one hand, dinner from their favorite restaurant in the other, Derek has filled three notebooks and has so many scars already that they’re starting to cover each other.</p><p>Stiles dumps the papers on the table and runs his hands over Derek’s face.</p><p>“I couldn’t find anything,” he apologizes. “I tried.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Derek says. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”</p><p>It doesn’t. Not after the initial spike that means he’s getting another scar. His life written on his skin where anyone can see it.</p><p>Derek is used to being called a pretty face, but he wonders if people will still think him pretty when he’s got slashes and scrapes all over his features. The people who know him but don’t know he’s a werewolf won’t understand.</p><p>“I promise, I’m fine,” Derek says. He closes the notebook, puts everything away, and sets the table for supper.</p><p>~ * ~</p><p>Derek hardly goes out anymore. He always preferred sticking close to home, but with all the scars covering his body, he doesn’t want to risk either exposing himself as a werewolf or having people call the cops on Stiles for abusing him.</p><p>Stiles notices but doesn’t say anything when Derek begs off errands, even going to get the mail from the box at the end of their driveway.</p><p>He looks sad, smells mad, and doesn’t come home as often.</p><p>Derek understands. Stiles married someone who couldn’t scar, who couldn’t show the pain his life had given him. And now Derek is a walking reminder that pretty is only skin deep.</p><p>It hurts, but honestly, Derek was expecting Stiles to give up way before now. Instead, Stiles still comes home, kisses his cheek, and drops into bed, snoring almost immediately.</p><p>He’s working on a project, but he doesn’t ever talk to Derek about it.</p><p>It’s been weeks since Derek heard Stiles’ voice.</p><p>Instead, the only voice he hears is the one in his head telling him that all he ever was good for was looking good. And now that he doesn’t have that, no one wants him.</p><p>Derek spends most of his days sitting in their bedroom, staring in the mirror, trying to see the old him under all the scars.</p><p>Stiles is at work on a Friday, and Derek is sitting, cross-legged, staring at himself. And then, he notices something different. A new kind of scar.</p><p>It’s a handprint on his hip. Small, smaller than his own hand anyway. It’s not Stiles’ either because Stiles has nice hands. These hands—he finds more marks across his buttocks and on his other hip too—are small, fingers thin, spindly, almost.</p><p>Derek tries to think back, remember if anyone burned him or cut him like that.</p><p>It takes far too long to realize just whose hands are tattooed across his skin.</p><p>Derek cries when he realizes that he’ll never be free of Kate now. That she’ll always have a place on him.</p><p>Stiles comes home early that night. He finds Derek still sitting naked in front of the mirror.</p><p>“So, I found out what’s causing this,” he says quietly.</p><p>Derek still startles even though he’d heard Stiles pull up.</p><p>“What?” he croaks back, not even pretending that he’s not doing what Stiles caught him doing.</p><p>“It’s a manifestation of love.”</p><p>“What is?” Derek doesn’t understand. He touches one of Kate’s handprints. “Love?” How can this be love? It’s like someone decided that he wasn’t showing his true self to the world. And now he can’t go out.</p><p>Stiles shakes his head. “My love. I’m so sorry, Derek.” Stiles sits down next to him, takes Derek’s hand in his. He doesn’t smell sad or mad. He just smells like…like nothing. Derek can’t smell him.</p><p>“I was working with mistletoe and wolfsbane today,” Stiles explains. “I didn’t want to bring home those smells, so Lydia gave me some scent-canceling soap. I promise that I’ll smell like myself in a few hours.”</p><p>“Why were you working with wolfsbane?”</p><p>“And mistletoe,” Stiles adds. He sighs, using the hand not holding Derek’s hand to tug at his hair. “I’ve been trying to figure out what’s happening and how to reverse it. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you about that. I know I hurt you and I promise to make it up. I’m also sorry. I found out that the scars are showing up because of me. Because of my love for you.”</p><p>“Because you’re a spark?” Derek asks. It’s better than asking how Stiles’ love managed to scar him. He traces another handprint.</p><p>Stiles nods. “Because I love you so much and I often think about showing the world just why I love you, I guess my spark manifested in showing the world your scars, showing them that I love you despite, in spite of, and because of them. And it’s permanent.”</p><p>Derek touches his knee, where he’d fallen off his bike at a hundred miles an hour and peeled off the kneecap. That scar isn’t big, but it was painful until it healed. He touches his chest where Peter punched through him, knows he has a matching scar on his back. Then he touches the handprint low on his belly. “Why these though?” he asks thickly.</p><p>Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He blows out a breath. “I can only guess that because it’s a part of you, the irreversible spell decided that it needed to be visible too. I’m sorry for that.”</p><p>“What if you didn’t love me anymore?” Derek asks. “Would that make them disappear?”</p><p>Stiles flinches. “Do you think I don’t love you?” he asks quietly. “Did you think I’d stopped?”</p><p>Derek shrugs. He doesn’t know what to think after nearly a month all by himself. Stiles basically abandoned him.</p><p>“I do love you,” Stiles says. “Your scars are proof of that. I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to show you just how much I love you.”</p><p>“Was an answer really so important that you—” Derek stops himself because if he keeps going he’ll start crying, and he’s done enough of that today.</p><p>Stiles tears up. “No,” he mumbles. “No, it wasn’t.” He stands up, reaching a hand down to help Derek up. “Did you really think that I’m only with you because you’re hot?”</p><p>“Yes,” Derek says simply. “No one ever wants me because of my personality.”</p><p>“But three years of marriage and almost six years of dating before that?”</p><p>“Yeah.” They’re both idiots, but right now, Derek’s wearing all the evidence.</p><p>Stiles grabs Derek’s hand and leads him to the bed. Stiles pushes Derek down, climbs onto the bed with him.</p><p>They aren’t going to have sex right now, are they? It doesn’t feel right, and Derek opens his mouth to tell Stiles that when Stiles presses a gentle fingertip to a fresh scar forming over Derek’s hip, scratches from a kelpie two years ago, following it closely with his lips.</p><p>“Just because we can now see your trauma,” Stiles whispers into his skin, “it doesn’t mean you’ve lost any of your value. You’ve never lost value, Derek. Never.”</p><p>A promise, bitten into his skin, Stiles marks him over his scars, fits his hands over Kate’s handprints, and leaves Derek raw and aching.</p><p>“How can I have value,” Derek asks around the lump in his throat, “when I don’t love myself?”</p><p>“You have value to me,” Stiles responds. “And you do love yourself. You let yourself have treats every now and again. You’ve stopped insulting your reflection. Or you had before this.” Stiles raises himself on one arm so that he can peer down at Derek with a pensive stare. “You let me love you, and that’s how I know you love yourself.”</p><p>“Why do you love me?” Derek asks.</p><p>Stiles presses his palm over the center of Derek’s chest, where Kali had speared him on the pole. “I love you because of you,” he says. “I love you because never once did you give up. You found a way to survive and you tried to do your best to help people even when they didn’t want your help. You did your best to protect those in your care.” Stiles lies down, covering Derek with his body. “I love you, Derek Hale, and it doesn’t really matter why, just that I do.”</p><p>“And you won’t hate me if the scars never go away?” Derek asks. Stiles had said they’re permanent. The only permanent Derek’s ever had is his tattoo.</p><p>“Never. I could never hate you.” Stiles rubs at one of Kate’s handprints and then at another, smaller handprint pressed over the center of Derek’s stomach. Jennifer. “I only wish that you didn’t have to see these reminders too. I didn’t want to traumatize you. And when I realized that your scars were coming back because of me, well, I…I couldn’t face you. I thought you’d hate me when you knew the truth too.”</p><p>“But why would I hate you?” Derek is the one who’s always been unlovable, who’s heard it in a million heartbeats and cruel whispers. He’d thought he’d heard it in Stiles’ absence too.</p><p>“Because I did this to you.”</p><p>“But not intentionally,” Derek says.</p><p>“No. Never. I love you too much to ever do anything to hurt you.”</p><p>Derek decides then to do something he has never done. He decides to believe Stiles’ words whole heartedly. If Stiles says he loves him, then he does. If he says that having a constant reminder of Derek’s past, his mistakes, covering his skin, every inch of him marked in some exposed way, doesn’t make him love him any less, then he believes him. And if Stiles loves him enough to make his scars show up, then Derek deserves to accept that love.</p><p>They don’t have sex that night or the next seven nights, but Stiles spends hours tracing every line, every pucker, every handprint, making them his own, giving Derek more memories than pain and fear. Instead of a map of mistakes, Stiles finds a path for their future. He takes Derek apart gently and knits him back together stronger and better.</p><p>And every time Stiles touches Derek, he hears the word “beautiful,” and after a few months, he starts believing it too.</p><p>~ The End ~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Cross-posted at <a href="https://1989dreamer.tumblr.com/">my Tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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